Boulder City Clerk Alisa Lewis threw out more than 500 signatures collected by one circulator, but a utility debt limit charter amendment with ties to Xcel Energy will remain on the ballot.

Lewis issued her ruling late Friday afternoon, a week after a two-day hearing on a protest filed by New Era Colorado, a liberal advocacy group.

New Era Colorado alleged that paid petitioners misled voters about the content and purpose of the charter amendment and tampered with the petitions. In a video submitted as evidence, a petition circulator identified as Mae Cornish can be seen writing on the petitions and telling signers that the city needs to have another vote on municipalization because the first one "didn't go through."

Boulder voters in 2011 passed a charter amendment giving the City Council authority to start a municipal utility provided certain conditions were met.

Lewis substantiated some of the complaints about Cornish and invalidated 545 signatures that she collected.

"The uncontradicted evidence presented by Protestors shows Mae Cornish: (a) tampering with the signature lines of the petitions in violation (of state statute); (b) misrepresenting facts related to the petition and the subject of the petition; and (c) unable to provide potential petition signers with the language of the petition," Lewis wrote in her ruling. "These acts constitute fraud and an abuse of the process. The videos show a person who is tired by the process and wants to get her $.50 for a signature and move on to the next signer without exercising any care to protect the process."

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Lewis also invalidated nine other signatures because there was no printed name.

However, Lewis did not find that New Era presented enough evidence to support some of the other challenges. Other petition circulators who were accused of misleading signers were not clearly identified in video and audio recordings made by New Era.

The charter amendment would require that voters approve the total debt limit of a future municipal utility and that affected county residents be allowed to vote in that election if the city extends service beyond city limits. It also limits those debt limit elections to general municipal elections, which occur only in odd years, and limits brokerage fees on debt to 1 percent.

Supporters of municipalization say the measure is designed to "kill" the municipal utility by making it difficult to pursue condemnation of Xcel Energy's assets or to issue debt in response to emergencies in a timely manner.

Xcel Energy has filed an issue committee in support of the charter amendment and polled the language in the spring, before petitions were circulated.

Katy Atkinson, a spokeswoman for Voter Approval of Debt Limits, said the decision to invalidate the signatures was political.

"I don't think this was a decision based on law," she said. "I think it was based on city politics."

Atkinson said there was no evidence that Cornish forged signatures. She only wrote over signatures to make them more legible.

"The city has shown that they will do anything they can to torpedo this effort," she said. "Be that as it may, we had ample signatures to remain on the ballot, and so we will be on the ballot. They really don't want the voters to have a say."

Steve Fenberg, executive director of New Era Colorado, took the ruling as a validation of his organization's complaints.

"We knew that the methods that they were using to get this on the ballot were unethical and illegal," he said. "I see this ruling as a positive in that it shows this ballot process for what it is."

Senior Assistant City Attorney Kathy Haddock said the city was required by law to review the complaint. Haddock said the city clerk reviewed each element of the complaint on its merits and didn't know until late Friday afternoon how those rulings would affect the total number of valid signatures.

However, a circulator writing on the signature line is strictly forbidden and is, in fact, a misdemeanor, Haddock said, though she did not indicate that Cornish would be charged.

"The signature line is the voter's, and you don't touch it," Haddock said.

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